BALTIMORE, MD — Former Raven Jacoby Jones, a mile-high miracle worker, died at the age of 40 from a disease millions of Americans battle each year.
Hypertensive cardiovascular disease, also known as the silent killer.
"Hypertensive cardiovascular disease or hypertensive heart disease, is when the heart suffers from the impact of long-standing high blood pressure," said Dr. Oscar Cingolani with John's Hopkins Medicine.
Athletes can be particularly susceptible to the disease when their lifestyle changes after retiring.
They're used to easily being able to handle a high-calorie diet because they exercise so much.
"We talk about athletes; there were studies done probably 20 years ago on NFL linemen, and linemen are pretty big guys, and they're trying to gain weight and trying to push people around, and what they found was these people had early moralities the NFL linemen in their 50's and 60's, from hypertension and coronary artery disease cause they didn't change their lifestyle," said Dr. Scott Jerome, a sports cardiologist from the University of Maryland Medical Center.
The best way to detect the disease is to get checked regularly.
Whether it's from your doctor or even an at-home test.
"You need to go to the doctor, and you need to have a regular checkup with your primary care physician because he or she is going to know whether you are at risk," said Cingolani.
Early detection is key, allowing lifestyle changes of your diet or activity level.
"First thing we do we try to minimize stress reduction, you try to minimize salt intake, maintain optimal weight, treat any other risk factors, such as obstructive sleep apnea, that can cause this. Then, if that all fails, we can go the pharmacological way with pills," added Dr. Jerome.
